Unsafe
by planet p
Summary: AU; the day had started out so well to end up coming to this…
1. Chapter 1

**Unsafe** by planet p

**Disclaimer** I don't own _the Pretender_ or any of its characters.

* * *

The grass, now cut to a nice, safe shortness, smelt dry. It wasn't any wonder; it was summer. The summer air and spiralling winds did that. It reminded him of school, where the grass was always kept short in the yards. And, sometimes, you would find patches where the grass had given up and, from then on, refused to grow.

His mother had liked the lawn kept short, too. She'd always hated the bugs and flying insects in summer; absolutely hated them. He'd always found them… a little bit… reassuring. Because they were alive, he supposed. Because they went on with their lives in spite of the sometimes – often – crappy way of things. (If you let yourself, you could see so many things as nothing but just another crappy thing.)

Who said things were meant to be awesome and cool and easy and nice anyway? They just were how they were and that was the way the world was, that was the way it went on, day after day. Like the sun coming up. Sometimes, he could remember being so happy, so excited just about the sun. Maybe that was just how kids were, or maybe he'd just stopped seeing all of those things the way he once had; maybe it was just everything that could get you down if you let it.

He supposed he ought have been getting on inside, but sometimes he needed to take a few moments to think about things, to consider them properly, as though they were real, and not just a game you played. Sometimes it helped, sometimes not. It was an awful feeling, feeling so disconnected from everything real, from reality, when everything would just seem… a little bit pointless, or monotonous, or useless.

It wasn't going to hurt anyone if he stayed outside for a few minutes longer, he decided, and it would make the rest of the day seem that much more… okay. If everything could just be… real, then it would be okay.

* * *

The floor felt soft because of the water. She'd just had a shower and everything felt soft and warm. The feeling would go away after a while – it always did, after all – but whenever she first got out of the shower, she always loved that feeling. It made her feel safe, and happy. She always liked that her clothes felt so soft when she put them on, when, later in the day, they felt kind of tired, listless. Yeah, she liked that feeling.

The television set was on in the hotel room, playing one of those talk shows she'd never really been able to get into, so she walked to the couch and lay down so that the water would come out of her ears. If it stayed in, she'd spend the entire day not being able to hear what was being said or talked about properly, and though she could smile about it now, it would get very frustrating very fast. It always did.

The water tickled when it ran out of her ear onto the towel she'd folded up and placed under her head, and she resisted the urge to shake her head about. She'd get water on the television screen, and she didn't want to sprain her neck muscles. Not to mention it would look completely silly.

"Good morning, Ethan," she said, when she spied him up.

"Morning," he answered, frowning at the television.

"I'm watching it," she laughed, though she wasn't really. She figured sometimes Jarod just liked the noise; she didn't think they're been much noise in the part of the Center where he had been housed and spent the majority of his time. It was something to remind him that he wasn't still there; that he was where he chose to be, now.

"Yeah?" Ethan asked, kind of unimpressed, she supposed, and she smiled at him widely. She didn't like to see him down all the time. She always tried to smile at least a couple of times a day when they were around each other, to let him know it was okay to be happy even though their circumstances mightn't have been ideal. "Yeah."

She sat up and picked the towel up, holding it against her chest with a smile. "Has Jarod gone back to bed?"

"Probably," Ethan replied.

Jarod had stayed up late working on something; he'd looked fairly tired already, but he hadn't gone to bed until he'd gotten to the bottom of the thing he'd been working on.

Emily crossed to the room and walked into the room Jarod had taken. She sat down on the side of the bed and asked, "Are you sleeping?"

"Trying to," came Jarod's muffled reply.

"I'm going to make coffee, okay," Emily told him. "Do you want me to come and get you when it's done? We could… find a café to have breakfast at. Not one of those places they have just about everywhere, one of those chain things, but one of the local places." She smiled, trying to feel encouraged and be encouraging for her older brother.

"Okay," Jarod mumbled.

She grinned and stood up, refraining from leaping up off the bed. "Super!"

"I'm making coffee and we're going out for breakfast," Emily told Ethan excitedly as she passed him on her way to the compact, little kitchenette.

"Thrilling," Ethan remarked, clearly not thrilled.

"It's exciting!" Emily told him, smiling.

"I'm excited for you," he replied, blandly.

She walked up to him and hugged him tightly. "I know you have a few excited bones in your body at least!"

"I think you just broke them," he mumbled.

She laughed, letting go of him. "You silly, silly thing!"

"Silly, silly me."

"Are you having coffee, too?"

"I guess, yeah."

"Excited!"

He pointed to the kitchenette. "The kitchen's lacking excitement. I think you should look into that. It needs you."

"Coffee, yay!"

Ethan made a little walking person gesture with his fingers.

She turned and walked to the kitchenette, tugging the hem of her jumper down properly.

* * *

Midori didn't really talk to him when he came in; she was on the phone and scanned his card in with a nod, nothing else. Her phone conversation didn't look fun, so he didn't stick around to ask how she was; it would probably go on.

The elevator music – the same muzak as always – was fighting hard to send him to sleep, but it would be okay when he got to the coffee room and had something to drink and maybe a biscuit. He'd seen Fulton's car in the parking lot, she would have had time to bring the biscuits to the coffee room, like she always did, even though no-one really knew that it was her who did.

Sometimes, they would talk about who it could be who always brought the biscuits, but he never said anything. He figured that if she'd wanted the whole world to know then she would have just said so, or left a little note or something. Maybe she just liked making biscuits, he thought, maybe it was something relaxing for her to do when she got home from work at the end of the day, something to do to wind down. There was nothing strange about that.

His sister was sitting in the coffee room with Sydney, talking about how she'd forgotten which week the recycling bins were put out and had had to ring the council offices to ask. She hadn't been game enough to pop over to her neighbour's to ask. Anyway, she didn't really like Frankie, Sara's dog, though she knew he was harmless. He was a pit-bull, but mostly it was just his name; it always reminded her of Cox.

She smiled. How weird would it be if Cox and Sara were to shack up, hey?

When she saw him standing in the door, she lowered her voice, and Sydney looked around to see why she'd done so. They wouldn't feel entirely comfortable until he'd gone, he knew, they trusted him that much. He didn't let it bother him so much; they could talk quietly amongst themselves, it wouldn't upset him that they didn't feel like talking to him. They never did. They just kind of got quieter when he was around.

He made a coffee whilst he waited for Broots, who usually got in later than his sister and Sydney, and had a look around for something to read.

Nobody was reading the paper, though it was always a day old, so he figured he'd read that. He didn't buy the newspaper, so he only ever read it in the coffee room, or in Heathrow Lounge on SL-5, or in the dining hall or if he went out, to McDonald's or a café or something, one of those places.

Sydney was looking at the newest psychology journal, telling Parker something quietly; probably discussing something he'd read, Lyle thought. It was good for his sister to have someone to talk to, he didn't deny that, and he liked to see her talking to Sydney honestly about things that actually mattered in her life and not just about whatever else everyone else was prattling about that day.

She didn't have any real women friends, and the men she usually dated weren't the type to ask her how she was, really. He supposed it wasn't really of their concern so much, or else they just figured she must have been fabulous.

That would be how they always saw her, he supposed, and that was the way she went out of her way to come over as. If people thought you were okay, they didn't ask if you were or not, he supposed. The questions would have turned her right off, unless they were coming from someone she trusted and had known for a long time so trusted her image with. If a stranger was to ask her how she was, she would get cold. She wouldn't think, _Oh, well, that was actually quite nice of them, they didn't have to ask me how I was._ She'd think, _Bugger off and stop invading my personal space._

Like they were some threat. Like she was separate from them, like that was the only way she could be to fend off all of her hurt at the way her life had gone, to be apart from the rest of the people, to be alone with her hurt. Like it was more her friend than any other person could possibly be.

He always hated when he saw she was feeling especially like that, and he could tell most of the time. Maybe she thought he couldn't, but he could. If they had been more like brother and sister, then maybe he could have talked to her, but they weren't, so he didn't. He'd just wait for Sydney to do that. What else could he do? She resented him enough for the way he had insinuated himself into her life and her family, he didn't feel that he needed her hating him any more than she already did.

He was okay to have a coffee if he didn't have as many as Frankie did; in his opinion, Cox was just a little strange with coffee. How he could take all of that caffeine was anyone's guess, he supposed, though it probably wasn't really that great for him. He didn't really bring it up anymore, though, he would have just pissed Cox off and that'd be another person pissed off at him.

When Broots came in, he would leave so Broots could have some time to talk to Sydney and Parker. As it was, his sister would be hurrying him out the door again as soon as she could, hassling him to get to work and find them a lead on Jarod.

He decided he could do without a biscuit; his sister had taken over the cookie jar and he didn't feel up to a glare from her when he asked if he could have a biscuit. She'd glared at Reston like that once and he'd laughed. If he did that, he'd never hear the end of it. His sister would be lamenting for days how she wasn't really allowed to shove him under a car, or a bus, or a train, but how she really would have loved to.

It wasn't even as though she worked with Reston, or he came up to the coffee room on a regular basis; it had just been a onetime thing, so if she'd been annoyed over it, he wouldn't have heard about it, in any case. And Reston wasn't her brother, or her twin.

He was, and she was always disappointed about that, and sometimes, she was even downright pissed off about it. She'd have rather it be practically anyone else, he knew, but it wasn't like he blamed her. He'd done such a famously wonderful job of endearing himself to her, after all, hadn't he? In other words, no, not really. So it was no surprise.

If she hadn't been pissed off at him, at times, he'd have been worried. The amount of times she was pissed off at Sydney or Broots, he couldn't even count, so it wasn't anything limited only to him. What was limited practically only to him was that even when she was pissed off at something Sydney or Broots had said or done, she wasn't pissed off at them in the same way that she was mad at him; she still cared about them, him, she couldn't care less if he died tomorrow, he thought most of the time.

Fair enough, hey.

Broots walked into the coffee room and he decided that was his cue. Time to go.

* * *

"We'll go out somewhere nice tomorrow," Emily told Ethan, trying to maintain the same brightness to her voice that she'd had earlier in the morning.

Jarod had finally got off to sleep and she hadn't really felt like waking him. Ethan was sitting in front of the TV, flicking through the channels aimlessly.

Emily walked to the room she'd been staying in and picked up her purse, tucking it into a pocket of her cargo pants, before going back to the lounge area. "Come on, do you want to have a look at the shops? Maybe we can have a drink at one a café along the way, if we see one."

"Yeah right," Ethan mumbled.

"I've got some money," Emily told him, forcing herself not to get annoyed. It wasn't as though she spent it on DVDs or CDs or even endless amounts of makeup or shoes, was it? She didn't have the room for all of that stuff, though she'd have liked to have some nice things, too. And she did have nice things, she told herself. Enough of them, in any case.

"Go on your own," Ethan told her. "I'm watching this now."

"Come with me," Emily complained. 'We'll get something to eat, okay? I have enough. Come on, you won't die if you leave that go."

"I'm watching it!"

Emily walked over and reached down to take his hand. He tugged it back almost immediately.

"I'm not going, okay!" he snapped. "If Jarod wakes up and we're gone, he'll flip! I'm his brother, I've got to stay!"

"And, what, I'm not his sister?" Emily replied hotly, suddenly hurt. She knew she was being silly, she shouldn't have said anything, but Ethan's words had hurt.

"I didn't say that," Ethan said angrily. "Can I watch this show or not? Or are you going to yabber the whole way through it and ruin it for me?"

_That's enough_, she told herself silently. _Don't say anything, don't start an argument. Just go._ She didn't really want to go on her own, it felt like abandoning her family, and it would probably only affirm Ethan's anger at her, but she couldn't do anything else, really, but let him work over his anger in his own way, in his own time.

So she forced herself to go out.

* * *

She walked past all of the little cafés; they looked so nice, but she didn't allow herself to stop. She didn't want to go alone, even though she'd have loved, more than anything, to sit down and have a coffee and a piece of cake at one of those places. She'd have been so happy – but not alone. Alone, she'd have felt selfish.

She didn't even stop to look through any of the racks at the clothing stores with the sales on, or at the latest fashions for summer. She just went walking by the windows and made her way toward the supermarket. They need a few things, anyway, so seeing as she was out, she'd be a fool not to get something.

She walked too slowly along some of the aisles, but too quickly along others. Some of the prices weren't right, so she didn't buy everything she'd been planning on getting. She told herself she'd get it at the next place, she'd have a look around.

She stopped in the fruit and vegetable section and couldn't bring herself to care for anything. The day had started out so promisingly, and now she just felt empty, careless, filled up with nothing that even mattered, and she was so full of it, it was suffocating her, but it wouldn't leave; it just wouldn't leave her alone.

She wanted to cry, but she couldn't be bothered. It would have been too much of a bother, even that.

She turned and walked back to the diary and refrigerated dessert aisle, where she was surrounded by the hum of machines from both sides, and chose a cup of green jelly. She just felt like jelly, that was all. There wasn't even any reason why, she just did. It was a lot of money for the small amount of jelly that it was compared to if she were to buy the crystals herself and make it up at home (at the hotel, really), but she supposed what she was really paying for was the convenience, and her own laziness. She was in a lousy mood, so she wasn't surprised that she put it down to those two reasons; she didn't even try to tell herself otherwise.

Outside of the mall, she sat down on one of the railings at a trolley bay and ate her jelly, her two plastic shopping bags slowly constricting the blood flow in the arm she was holding her jelly cup in the hand of.

She didn't kick her legs about; she wasn't bored. Her life sucked.

* * *

On her way back to the motel, she walked by a video store and stopped to look at the poster put up in the window. Beyond the poster she was looking at, she could see a young couple discussing a DVD they were considering renting out. They were standing close together, their heads leant together as they talked, their arms touching.

Emily turned and walked away from the video store, feeling even more depressed than before. She'd have loved a boyfriend, but she just never had the time to stick around anywhere for long enough to ever get to know anyone that well.

She scuffed her shoe on the concrete sidewalk and admonished herself mentally: that was the way to go, ruin her shoes, why didn't she!

She picked up her feet a bit more, stopping at the end of the street to look at her reflection in a large window at the side of a bank branch, and saw that she was wearing an unwelcoming scowl. Yeah, like anyone would want to talk to her with that look on her face! Hardy-ha!

She laughed.

She was acting crappy, and she was crappy.

She looked around her for any cars and crossed the road. _Crappy Emily_, she thought, and suddenly remembered something. She'd bloody forgotten to have a look at any of the other stores, hadn't she!

How much of a loser was she!

Quietly hating herself, she walked faster. She wasn't going to go all the way back now, so she might as well have hurried it up and gotten back to the hotel. She could make some cheese sandwiches, at least, if anyone was even interested in eating lame cheese sandwiches.

_Stop being so crappy_, she thought angrily to herself, _you're only talking yourself further into a mood. You can make toasted cheese sandwiches, alright! They're always better than plain, boring old cheese sandwiches._

But she didn't even feel like toasted cheese sandwiches, the cheese would only come over the sides and set the smoke detector off when it started burning at the bottom of the griller over, and she'd be in trouble for causing so much racket.

She wished she'd stayed in bed.

_What was the point of even getting up?_ she thought. _What was the point of even feeling excited?_ There was nothing to be excited about. Nothing at all! It was all just so crappy. Her whole life was just crappy.

She didn't bother stopping at the corner – she was angry; she didn't want to stop, she just wanted to get back to the stupid hotel – and even though she'd seen no cars on her side, she'd forgotten that at a corner cars could come from more than just one direction. Or maybe she'd just forgotten to care, maybe she'd forgotten that she did still care.


	2. Chapter 2

At first, there was only pain, and then, gradually, the pain was joined by the scuffing sounds of shoes and the loud voices of two young men. In the background, the city went on, just as before. She wasn't missed; not yet.

"You could've just pulled over and grabbed her!"

Her thoughts were strange; they ran away from her like the little wind that brushed unnoticed over her skin. _I don't want you to want me_, she thought. _Go away, please. Leave me alone. Please. Stop… stop saying things. It hurts. It hurts too much for you to… talk…_

"She was running away!"

"She didn't even know we were following her, you idiot!"

"Dude, I'm telling you she was making a runner! These dudes know when you're onto them!"

"Shut up! Fuck! Fuck! Oh man! What if she's dead? Fuck! We've gotta get her to a hospital! Fuck!"

_What if I'm dead?_ she thought, and it was funny, but she couldn't laugh. She would have, she just couldn't.

"Dude, relax. These guys can fix themselves. She's not dying, she's fine."

Her thoughts seemed to say, _I couldn't fix a cup of coffee right now! Even an instant would be out of the option._

"Shut up! SHUT UP!"

"Dude, you gotta chill."

_Chill. Rhymes with kill. Pill, still. Hill, mill, till. You… you dill!_

"I think she's dead!"

_I think the dude's right._

"Fuck! Get her in the trunk before anyone notices! You pussy! I told you, she's fine. Don't you get it? If we take her to some official joint, they'll take her off us! If that happens, we'll be fucking shit lucky if we escape with our lives! I need this fucking money, dude! And I don't need to end up a corpse! Get her in the trunk."

_Junk, hunk… Do the aliens still need spaceships? Don't they travel on moonbeams? Sunbeams? Cloudbeams? I'm going travelling on the Shadow Express._

"Okay, shut up!"

_Hello, shadow. Hello, shadow. Hello, shadow. Gee, you guys really have inventive names!_

"Pussy!"

_What is it they say in French? Happy travels? _Bon voyage_? He's not a cat, you dill! I can hear him; he's a person!_

How she wanted to laugh, then. And she would have; she would have, if she could have; if the darkness hadn't arrived so soon. The darkness would take away the pain; she wasn't scared one bit.

_Goodbye, baby bluebird. Goodbye, three brown bottles of beer…_

* * *

When she woke, it was to find that she'd used up all of her travelling credit. She'd been thrown off the Shadow Express, Kyle wasn't waiting for her, and the pain was back. Worse than ever.

If she was lying on something hard or something soft, she couldn't tell. There was just the pain, and the voices. Too loud voices. None of them Kyle's. A part of her mind said, _How would you know what Kyle's voice sounded like, silly?_ The other part didn't have an answer; maybe it didn't understand the question.

If she could have formed words and spoken, it would have been to tell Kyle to hurry up. She was waiting here. If she waited too long, she'd be arrested for loitering. That would be _fun_, but expensive. She didn't think Kyle would find it funny, somehow. _Spoilsport, you! You!_

The voices were getting weaker, quieter, like soda pouring out of a jug that had been knocked over. Without the bubbles. For a moment, she wondered why she couldn't hear the bubbles. She couldn't think right at all. But, in the back of her mind, she had the feeling that, this time, she wouldn't be waking up for a long, long time. She was going to sleep, just like Sleeping Beauty. Except SB had been prettier, she thought.

Once again, her awareness of the pain departed with her consciousness.

* * *

Marlon had taken the woman out of the trunk of the car and left her on the garage floor, but, despite Wayne's confidence, she sure didn't look like she was getting better to him; she looked a whole lot far from fine it gave him the creeps. For a moment, he wondered if she was even alive. If maybe she'd died already – and he'd been touching a dead body!

His skin crawled.

Wayne's real name was Tom, but Wayne didn't really like Tom, so he'd decided that he would be called Wayne, instead. Marlon's real name was Marlon; he didn't have a name he liked better, he liked his own name just fine. But the woman, he didn't like he looks of her at all. She scared him!

"Look," Wayne was saying, "we'll just tell them she's asleep. They'll never know she ain't just asleep."

"She's got blood all over her!" Marlon protested. "Do you think they're fucking stupid, Wayne!"

"Then…" Wayne cringed a little, "we'll fix her up. Get the blood off her, make her look presentable. Won't we?"

"I'm not touching some dead body, Wayne!"

"Well, yes you are, Marlon. We both are. We'll do it together. That way, it'll take no time at all."

"They're gonna know she's dead, man! Fuck! Fuck!"

"She's not dead, dude. She's just playing a game with you, fuckin' with your head! You're so fucking thick sometimes, dude! I told you she'd be right – and she is!"

Marlon's face contorted into an angry expression. "Is that what your dumb fucking Voices say, huh? They say she's fine! She's fucking fine!"

Wayne's expression turned so fast it was scary. Marlon had forgotten he wasn't allowed to diss the Voices. Whatever the Voices said was gospel to Wayne, even when they talked nothing but shit.

Before he knew it, Wayne had smacked him one and he was lying on the garage floor with the dead body that creeped him out completely. Wayne walked into the house adjoining the garage and locked the door behind him.

Marlon tried not to scream. If he screamed when Wayne was on the phone to the buyers, he told himself, he'd be in serious trouble.

He rose to his feet, his legs shaking, and tried one of the car's doors, and the next… and the next, but every one he tried was locked. He forced himself to swallow his panic, but it hurt going back down.

The garage was locked electronically and he didn't know how to make it work manually.

He sat down on the floor at the front of the car, leaning his back against the grill, and stared at the white paint clinging fittingly to the metal garage door. He wouldn't think about the body, he thought. He'd think about the money, and the girls who'd want to know him when he was rich, who'd want to talk to him and loop their arms through his.

When their money finally came, it would all be worthwhile. _You'll see_, he told himself. _You'll see, Marlon. You really will. Wayne always said something good would come of his therapy sessions – and he was right. He was always right._

They'd be able to get Wayne's sister her medication, and there'd still be plenty of cash left to use on the good things.

* * *

The first she knew that the blackness had lifted was the sound of a voice asking her to open her eyes. She tried really hard, and it worked. She was pleased beyond pleased, until she saw that the person who'd been talking to her wasn't Kyle, or even Jarod or Ethan.

She didn't know the person at all.

She felt suddenly afraid. If her life had been a fairytale, she'd have been the little girl who'd strayed too far from home and couldn't find her way back to her loved ones. She was very frightened.

The man's voice told her that they – whoever they were, she thought – had given her something for the pain, and asked how that was, if it was working.

She said nothing, she was too frightened to talk in case the moment she spoke the man leaned over and _Wham!_ – scooped up her soul to keep for himself.

It was an irrational, crazy, crazy fear. Unless she really was dead, and he was the Soul Collector.

So she closed her eyes and pretended she didn't hear his voice.

* * *

After the first pain finally departed and she was, as the man said, all better – _How long had that been?_ she wondered. It seemed like it had been far too quick for much of anything to have changed, really. But she really did seem better, and there was no more pain – that was when the questions started, when the big expectations came. And when she got something wrong, the pain came back all over again. But this time it wasn't the sort of pain that came from foolishly stepping into the path of a speeding vehicle, it was the pain of fists and knuckles and too many drugs.

Slowly, it occurred to her that these people were probably the two young men had been hoping to sell her to. It looked like that sale had gone down, after all. She wondered what had happened to the two young men, and if they were as happy as she was.

She wanted to yell at the people that she wasn't what they thought she was, that she wasn't a Pretender, but then that would be admitting that she knew something about Pretenders, that would be endangering her loved ones, so she just couldn't do it. She just couldn't say anything. She wouldn't say anything, no matter how much they hurt her. She wouldn't say even a single word.

* * *

One day, they hit her so much that she was sure she would die. And maybe she had; maybe they'd brought her back again.

She prayed that the next time she died, the Soul Collector would be waiting to spare her this horror. If she had to, she'd get down and plead until he couldn't ignore her anymore.

She didn't want to do this anymore.

* * *

The woman, it seemed, much to their dismay, truly was recessive of any usefulness. The tests told them as much. Still, they could hardly set her free. They'd have to kill her if they couldn't find a use for her, it looked like.

They were happy when, finally, they were able to find a use that gave them an excuse to be able to keep her after all. She would be useful as a tool in training their Reapers. The Reapers always responded to real person-to-person interaction better. When she got hurt, they'd always be able to Heal her. They hadn't spent as much as they had on purchasing a Healer for them to be put to use rarely at best; no, they intended to get their money's worth, on all counts.

* * *

Seven days a week, she was subjected to pain that made the pain of being hit by a car look tame in comparison. Bones were broken on her, she was cut, stabbed, mauled, thrown across rooms, beat until she couldn't even dream of getting back up, if she'd been able to dream at all with the drugs she was put on. She had the life pulled from her forcibly as though she was meant to charge a phone, or someone's mp3 player. And, once a week, she would die, and be revived again.

She was living in Hell, and that was supposed to be okay.

It wasn't okay.

It wouldn't have been okay, if she could have strung three coherent thoughts together.

Most of the time, three coherent thoughts was a miracle. When she was able to form them, they would always be the same.

_I don't want to do this. I want to stop._

_Everything._

_Forever._

She barely remembered anymore what it had been liked before; she barely remembered ever having a name. Here, she was called Meat. They'd never found out her name, so they called her Meat.

That was what she was.

She was some monster's meat. She was supposed to make them stronger, make them smarter.

But even that concept escaped her, most of the time.

There was just life, and then death. And, once again, life. And it all went around in circles, never ending circles, circles that merged into circles until she couldn't say for sure what even a circle was; until she couldn't say for sure the difference between life and death, death and life.

It might have all been the same.

It might have all been more of the same. Always just the same.

After long enough, even the pain began to blur into sameness. It became just pain. Pain that hurt, that she didn't want, but pain, pain that always came, pain that was a part of her now, a part of her name, of her being, her entire description, her reason for being.

To be useful, meat always had to be dead first. But to get to the stage of being useful, it had to first live.

Live and die.


	3. Chapter 3

The first that she knew at all of the notion that anything was different, that something had gone badly wrong, something had gone badly askew, was the light. It was warm, and it looked… different. She wanted to crawl away from it, race away from it, if her body would allow her, but she couldn't move. She was… was it called… she was lying on something soft. She didn't know the word for it anymore, but she was afraid of what the soft thing she was lying on might have meant.

And it was warm.

She'd never been allowed to lie on anything that wasn't hard. Mostly, that had been a floor, or a table, when she'd been in the process of being revived.

The fright made her want to run, to run or to hurt something. Anything to make the fright go away. It was making her heart race as though she was running, though she wasn't.

She didn't like this game. It was cruel and mean and she didn't like it. They shouldn't have been playing this game with her, they shouldn't have been playing tricks on her; she'd only ever done what they'd wanted. She'd never had the chance to do otherwise.

She couldn't understand why they were doing this.

But, of course, it was just a game, and games were fun… to everyone but her, she thought.

Slowly, her heart slowed down, and she realised that it wasn't just the soft thing she was lying on that had changed, or the light, it was the room, too. It looked… strange. Someone had… done something to the wall, and there was a window. The window was where the warm light was coming in from, but… she couldn't see out. There was something in the way, as though if it wasn't there, the light would burn into her eyes and make her blind.

She stared at the curtain and its awful pineapple pattern and felt frightened. Less frightened, but still frightened. It was more like a slow dawning horror; the sort of horror that could kill people, she thought. Like a broken heart. The horror would snap her heart right clean in half, and that would be the end of her. No more Meat.

* * *

From beside her, she felt something on the mattress shift and stopped breathing, too afraid to turn, and too afraid to close her eyes. Closing her eyes had only ever made it worse, and she was hoping for something less worse. Something… less frightening. At least, if she had had the guts to turn around and face the scary thing, but she was too afraid, so she just kept staring fixedly at that horrible curtain and thinking, over and over, _Go away, go away, go away._

If she thought it enough, she thought, maybe the thing would stay, but she would just go away; maybe she would just fade away, like the little pieces of dust floating in the gap between the curtains that was coloured a brilliant, dazzling yellow.

She hadn't realised it over the _Pound! Pound! Pound!_ of her heart, thudding heavily like an old, reliable machine in her chest, but she'd started shaking.

The shaking frightened her more than the thing she couldn't see, because the shaking told her than the thing would soon be able to see her, it would soon sit up and take notice of the shaking thing beside it, and that could not be good.

She'd just about wrangled her nerves into some semblance of forced calmness, into some semblance of coping, when something practically exploded beside her – accompanied by a horrible, loud racket that wouldn't stop.

If it had been able, she was sure her heart would have leapt right out of her chest in fear. She wasn't sure that it hadn't; she wasn't sure that it was still sitting where it should have been in her chest.

"Who the fuck asked your opinion?" an irritated voice asked from beside her – the monster, she thought – and the sound was stopped. The monster was awake.

She gathered her wits and spun about, rising to her knees. This time, she wasn't waiting for the monster to attack her; she was going to take it down before it even had the chance to sink its teeth into her!

Leaping at the monster with a snarl, she knocked them both off the mattress and to the floor. Surprisingly, the monster was easily overcome. Too easily, she thought, until her eyes caught on the metal glint of handcuffs.

A growl escaped her. What sort of a lunatic had thought it was a good idea handcuffing her to a monster!

Forcing her eyes from the handcuffs, she glared down at the monster. It didn't look much like a monster now, it just looked like a person. It appeared to be unconscious.

She wondered if she was expected to finish it off, or if there would be punishment if she did so. She had never won a fight before; it was all too strange.

She picked herself up and sat down beside the monster, reaching for the large, black rectangular object sitting on a small cabinet beside the bed that she'd be able to use to defend herself when the monster regained consciousness. It wasn't much of a weapon, but it was the best she had.

* * *

As she was waiting for the monster to regain consciousness, a thought occurred to her. How she ever hoped to fight a full fledged Reaper at the stage that this one was in life, she hadn't thought of. Now that she did think of it, she realised that she would not be the one on the winning end. She had to take matters into her own hands, now. And if they were to punish her later for it, so be it; at least she'd still be alive to punish.

She did not trust this Reaper at all, there was something strange about it, something different.

She had to eliminate it now.

* * *

She was sitting very still, watching as the light coming in through the window with its pineapple-patterned curtain changed in intensity, when she heard the lock in the door turn and the door open. They'd finally come for her.

She didn't try to take them on, she knew she wouldn't win. They had obviously wanted this one dead; it was hardly at the height of its game anymore; if it wasn't already dead, it soon would be. She'd done what they'd wanted of her; she'd taken care of their problem for them.

Forcing her thoughts to the present, she noticed that a slight, brunette-haired woman was standing in the doorway, framed by the bright, midday light. She had never seen this woman before.

She readied herself to take her out.

* * *

"What was I supposed to do?" Miss Parker shot at Sydney. He had on one of his disapproving looks. "Somebody's done something to her, and it isn't anything good. She wanted to kill me!"

"And you had to respond by shooting her!" Sydney replied hotly.

"I shot her in the leg, Syd; she'll live. Can't say the same for that idiot, Lyle. Oh, yeah, I'm sure it seemed like a good idea at the time, you know. _But Jarod said that if I got his crazy sister back for him, he'd agree to come back to the Center._ Talk about an imbecile! What do you know, I don't see Jarod anywhere! Do you?"

Sydney kept quiet. He wasn't all that concerned about Lyle, actually. In fact, he was more concerned about Jarod's sister.

Miss Parker shook her head angrily. "How dare he go behind my back like that! We could've easily handled this together, but, no, he had to behave like an idiot! He doesn't really believe that Raines will stand behind him if he brings Jarod back, does he? Raines knows as well as anyone that he, as much as Kyle, could only ever be destined for one thing – a bullet in the head and that's the end of it! It didn't work – move on!"

"One would think it was relatively simple," Sydney replied.

"It _is_ that simple, Syd," Miss Parker snapped.

"Then why don't you take care of it? Say the woman was able to momentarily overpower you and take the gun from you? There was nothing you could have done to stop her; you were taken completely unaware. You hadn't been expecting company in the form of a deranged young woman holding a vendetta."

Miss Parker shook her head. "And you'd have me down as the funny one, Syd."

"I am merely stating one option available to you should you wish to end the troubles that your brother has brought up since his arrival."

"I'll tell you what you're merely doing – you're merely going easy on the coffee, gramps," she snapped.

"You are not your brother, you need not label me such offensive nicknames," Sydney snapped back.

"How is 'gramps' offensive, Syd? What, have you got something against grandchildren?"

"Anything that comes out of your brother's mouth is offensive. It's the only thing he knows how to be."

"Give him a break, he's a lunatic," Miss Parker told him. "And if he doesn't watch it, very soon, he'll be a dead lunatic. Imagine the fun I'll have explaining that to Raines! If he doesn't lose it on the spot, I can very well imagine him proposing a plan for me to bear several dozen children with Jarod to make up for all of the stock losses Blue Cove has suffered lately. That isn't something that I'd fucking delight in hearing, Syd, believe you me! However much I think Jarod can be an attractive, caring person when the notion strikes him!" She shook her head. "Don't even say that shit! If that loony's done and dusted, you know who it'll fall on to next to come up with the next grandchild! Right! That'd be fucking me! No fucking thank you!"

"That would just never happen," Sydney replied. "You're past the age of reliably bearing children, Miss Parker."

She laughed. "Shut it, Syd. You and I both know, _in this day and age_, that 'past the age of bearing children' won't make a jot of jolly difference! Raines'll come up with some new evil scheme – he always does! Don't ask me how, but, if nothing else, that psychopath is resourceful! They do say he is my father, after all." She nodded. "Now kindly, I'd like a coffee and some alone time to my ruminations!"

"I wouldn't disagree to a coffee," Sydney added, receiving a very dirty look from Miss Parker. Hadn't she just said that he wasn't to have any more coffee today? She had no desire to hear the long list of deranged plots he'd come up with over the years, especially the ones involving shooting people. It was bad enough that she'd had to shoot Jarod's sister – in the leg!

The girl was just damn lucky she was such a good thinker in tricky situations, and such a good shot! Or else that would have been the end of her.


End file.
